10 Best Mobile Apps for label printing

[Andrade Jantz]

Did you know that sticker printing can be an all around marketing tool for coffee shops and bakeries?Custom stickers can be made into different promotional items and create the visibility you want for your business. Below are some great suggestions from coffee shop Click here for more and bakery owners on how they use custom stickers in promoting their business.

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Top 5 Tips on How to Use Stickers as a Marketing Tool

1. Labels. Your stickers can be your labels. You can use a clear or a label with white background for all the pastries and bread you put in a plastic container or plastic wraps. If your coffee shop offers bottled waters, you can also use these stickers for labels.

2. Coasters. You can use the ordinary adhesive sticker as coasters or the vinyl one for durability and re-usability. There are people who collect coasters and if you make yours a keeper, it will land in some collector's private stash. When these collectors come together in conventions or conferences, your coaster would have granted you free advertising, which is why you need to make your coasters done in high-quality paper stock.

3. Bumper Stickers. Your coasters can be re-used as bumper stickers. For coasters that have seen better days from the bottom of a glass, recycle it by converting these into innovative bumper stickers. It's a good way to save money and generate brand recall for your regular customers.

4. Shopping Bag Closures. Shopping bags are a must for any retail business establishment. You can use your stickers as your shopping bag closures instead of just a stapler wire or tapes. A sticker with your brand on it makes the shopping bag look more attractive to other shoppers. Branded shopping bag stickers give the packaging a more sophisticated look.

5. Name Tags. If your coffee shop offers in-house parties as part as of your service, you can use stickers for name tags. You can also use stickers as name tags for your service crew.

These are just some of the tips business owners shared on how sticker printing are one of the most effective marketing tool. There many creative ways of using custom stickers. Displaying these stickers create the visibility you need for your company. The more people see the stickers, the more popular your brand becomes.

Putting a bar code on your product involves several steps;

1 - having a code or creating one.

2 - choosing the right place to put the code

3 - choosing the method to affix or print the code

4 - having a perfect image of the bar code itself

Lets take these one at a time.

1. If you are producing items that will be sold in retail stores and you need bar codes for those products, you will have to buy them somewhere. You cannot just make up your own codes. (Example - your company is going to product various types of funny t-shirts that tourists will buy, in different colors and sizes and sell them through local stores in your town.) More on how to get a code later.

If you intend to use the bar codes for purposes only internal to your business, then you may be able to print your own. An example of this would be a serial number that goes on a product you are using. Each serial number will be different and you want to print them out yourself. This can be okay, but if security is a concern you might not want to.

2. Where to put the bar code - Are you going to put the code on the product itself? This can be complicated. If the product is say a circuit board that will go inside a computer, then the bar code will need to be very small and resistant to heat - it will probably be necessary to have these labels printed by a company that specializes in such a thing. On the other hand, if the label is going to go on the outside of a box, you may be able to print these yourself, perhaps using a dedicated bar code printer and/or special software. If the boxes are going to be exposed to long periods of sunlight, or extreme temperatures, be sure you get labels that can withstand such factors. Labels for jewelry tags may sit in display cases where temperatures can easily get into the high 90s or even over 100 degrees.

3. As mentioned in part 2 above, labels may require special adhesives. If the code is to be used for tracking fixed assets - like desks, chairs, file cabinets, computers, or construction machinery - you will want labels or tags that will not come off and will not be easily destroyed. There are many companies that can provided coded tags made out of metal, with permanent adhesives that can withstand extreme temperatures.

It is often worthwhile to purchase a dedicated bar code printer to produce large quantities of labels cheaply and without trouble. There are many types of label printers and generally these are easy to use and fit right on your desktop.

For large quantities of labels, or for printing codes on tags, wristbands and other interesting places - a specialized bar code printer is the best method.

4. Have a perfect image - there are very precise specifications for the creation of these codes. What you can create on your own computer and printer may not meet those specifications. If you are putting your products into the retail environment, they will have to be able to be scanned by hundreds of different types of readers. Therefore the actual printing of the code should be done by a specialist who will test the code with a special device (called a Verifier) to ensure it is 100% accurate.

If the bar codes are simply to be used in your own company, you can easily print some yourself and then test them. It is highly recommended to test the printed label before you print thousands of them. Plenty of people have gone and printed codes without ever testing them, only to find that eventually, for some reason, the code was not readable. Always test your codes before you put them on things.